


These Shades Are Gucci

by cordeux



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Gen, also there are some star wars references, but there are guns and swords and super secret spy stuff so i mean, purely a self-indulgent au fic, self-care, suffer alongside me as i continue on without a beta, there's like sort of a plot but really idk what i'm doing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29194824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeux/pseuds/cordeux
Summary: Maybe we can take HYDRA down together, as a treat?Purely a self-indulgent fic about two people who walk dangerously close to that line that separates heroes from villains and what that influence could mean for either one of them; meant to distract me from Covid symptoms, so take it with a grain of salt. AU with a mixture of MCU and 616, but mostly 616. Rating is for language and violence.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. curiosity killed the cat

**Author's Note:**

> shrug emoji
> 
> i have no real excuses, other than that i'm writing something i would want to read. i interpret bobbi a little differently than the comics show her, she's a bit darker here. like i said, this is an au so not everything is "accurate". if it doesn't make sense, sorry. fever brain.

_I don't do much science-related shit these days._

Sitting in front of a cafe in an undisclosed location, sipping coffee and pretending to read that day's newspaper was one Barbara Morse. Even on her off-days, she couldn't relax much. The sunglasses, dark enough to hide her eyes, the storefronts that boasted tinted front windows. Couldn't see shit mirrored on those that were completely transparent.

_Just 'cause I'm off, doesn't mean anybody else is._

She was antsy and pretending she wasn't. AIM was on the move, or so the underground said, and she was getting the itch to go freelance and put a few of them down before they got the green light on any of their (typically) fucked-up ideas, but she was supposed to be laying low after the last blow-up with Clint.

_You put him down like a dog, Bobbi, and that's not how we do things._

_Fuck you, Barton._

Having successfully irritated herself, she gave the newspaper a furious little shake to straighten it back out, and was about to take another sip of coffee when she noticed something interesting out of the corner of her eye, reflected by the cafe's window.

_Hello._

Two goons in an alley, unaware (or unable to account for) of the way their location was visible to the right person. They were plainclothes, but you could tell. If you knew what you were looking for, you could tell. Besides, what right-minded citizen hung out in an _alley_ to-- what? Converse? Casually inquire as to what the other's wife was doing? No. She went back to sipping coffee as she read their lips, _Russian_ , and almost choked.

_Who did Zemo piss off badly enough to warrant these instructions?_

_We weren't paid to ask questions, only to finish the job and bring back proof of the deed._

This brought up a number of questions that Bobbi _should_ have ignored while she forwarded the tip directly to Fury, but she was still pissed the _fuck_ off about the whole debacle with SHIELD's medical department using her as a goddamned guinea pig, and she was a _scientist_. People didn't become scientists because they liked to keep their mouths shut and fall in line. No, they fell into that line of work due to an insatiable curiosity and a need for answers that sometimes bordered on _unhealthy obsession_. Not that she would know anything about that sort of thing, though.

Why, to start with, was Baron Helmut Zemo in _California_ of all places? Which organization was after his head, and what had he done _this_ time?

The biggest question, she supposed, was _why had he resurfaced_? She had been under the impression the bitch was _dead_ , which typically meant they didn't have to worry about any Zemo-related bullshit for three years at the very least, and they were only on year-fucking-one of the cycle.

_Not my problem this time._

She went back to her newspaper.

The goons, she noted, moved off.

A wordless sound of irritation escaped her and she dropped her paper on the table as she, a glutton for punishment and wanting answers despite herself, took off for the nearest fire escape to tail them from the heights. This was her home turf, after all, she reasoned as she yanked a baseball cap out of her purse and pulled it over her head, so she _should_ be aware of what was going down in it. Just on principle.

She tailed them across the roofs. To their credit, they made it somewhat difficult, but to their detriment, she was one of those enhanced humans you were always hearing shit about. Or weren't hearing about, considering the roles she typically worked in. Regardless, this was rookie shit and she was getting bored, thinking maybe it wasn't that big of a deal. Sure, Zemo _resurfacing_ was, especially in some snowless, sunny place like California, but maybe he just owed some Russian some money, at this level of expertise.

The level of boldness was unprofessional as well, if she were being honest. If she were going to plan a hit on someone, especially a master strategist like this target, she'd make sure it was the dead of night. There was something to be said about the element of surprise; surely he'd be more likely to expect death in the dark corners of his world rather than the daylight of normalcy, but the risks of botching it went _hella_ down when you didn't have to add the numerous factors of _a city at peak operating time_ to the _other_ numerous factors.

_Hang on._

More suspicious. They'd approached an area where a SHIELD safehouse was located. You did this kind of work for enough time and you tended not to brush anything off as paranoia or coincidence; doing so could lead to your death.

Sure enough, as the spaces between buildings became further apart and she had to descend to ground level once more, the path she took, sticking to corners and shadows and adjacent routes brought her closer to one of the poshest places SHIELD kept in their San Diego holdings.

She pulled her gun from its hidden holster as she approached the property and nudged the gate with her hip. It swung inward. Unless the Russians had scaled the hedges into the property adjacent to this one (and they hadn't, the hedges were still perfectly manicured), this was the place.

Skirting the building, ready to fire at a moment's notice, Bobbi peeked out from around the corner of what turned out to be a small guest house to get an impression of what she was dealing with.

_By the pool, two down, man in a loud Hawaiian shirt in a lounge chair, and the Russians._

She ducked back to listen.

"Gentlemen, what brings you to the Sunshine State?"

The slight German accent lilt to his English left her with no doubt. _Helmut Zemo, at a SHIELD safehouse? The two down must be agents. Why wasn't I briefed on this? In my damn city?_

"--sends their regards," came the reply from the goons. She'd missed the first bit because she was in her own thoughts. Stupid.

"A Game of Thrones reference? How quaint."

_What a pretentious dickhole,_ she thought, already annoyed, and shot a Russian through the face to announce her presence. _I hope this guy kneecaps him before I take him down._

Had to leave one alive, after all. Interrogation and all that.

She shot the gun out of the other would-be assassin's hand and he cursed at her. Clint would have been proud of that shot, _but he would've been up your ass for the first Russian_.

She clicked her tongue and wagged her finger at the last(?) opponent, lips turning up into a smirk.

"I wouldn't, if I were you."

She could feel calculating eyes evaluating her every move, and the awareness was--odd. She felt a strange urge to show off, and she had to shake it when her opponent ran at her. He was bigger than her, after all, and probably meant to intimidate her with his size, but it didn't phase her. Instead, she dug her feet into the ground and caught the tackle with little reaction, other than a slight grunt. Bobbi brought her right arm back and, in one swift movement, slammed the heel of her palm into the Russian's nose with enough force to break it. She cut the man's scream of pain short with a heavy punch to the gut. Once he was down, she flipped him over and planted a foot on his back, pulling his arms behind him, and fished a couple of zip-ties out of her bag to secure his wrists with.

"You just happen to have those on your person?"

"Oh, and you don't?" She replied snidely, turning her gun, finally, on the last man sitting. She was immediately hit with an almost painful irritation.

_Bright orange shirt with garish palm trees, salmon-colored beach shorts, expensive ass sunglasses that look cheap as fuck, and that shit-eating grin. God, I hate him._

He held his hands up in a mocking universal gesture of _calm down, I'm unarmed_ , and she felt such an urge to hurl her gun at him at full force that it was nearly impossible not to give in to it.

"What the _fuck_ are you wearing?" She demanded, checking the magazine of her gun. She missed the way his eyes lit up behind his sunglasses as she put another bullet into the dead Russian, just to be sure. Then she reloaded and turned the gun on him.

"When in Rome..." He began, and she fired a shot into the air beside his head. "Testy."

She waited.

"SHIELD needed information. I was happy to provide."

"Yeah, I bet."

"You don't believe me?"

"Oh no, I do. Some dumbass at HQ probably put you up here, thinking that any of the stuff you gave them was inside intel when a quick dive into a HYDRA base would have gotten me the same shit; I have absolutely no doubt that you _specifically_ put this city in their mind. The Russians must have been your doing, too. Damn it," she pinched the bridge of her nose, "pulled me right in."

"Drink?"

Bobbi stared at him for a moment, considering it, and then sighed through her nose, shouldering her bag.

"No. We have to move. Now."


	2. The Long-Winded Explanation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we learn how the two main characters met

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i (yay!) don't have covid anymore, so i can't use that as an excuse for bad writing and a lack of planning re: anything regarding this story. anyway, please continue to enjoy this hellish rollercoaster with me as i figure out what the hell is happening (i cannot for the life of me decipher my outline notes, oop) alongside you all. or don't enjoy it, it's your choice.
> 
> edit: LMAOOOO I FORGOT LIKE 250 WORDS, edited to add them in sorry

_Let's go back a little, shall we?_

Grief was one of those things that took over your life, no matter what tricks or schemes you tried to enact to keep it out. It did this thing where it subtly weaved its way through everything and anything you did; the things you thought, the _way_ you thought, the very way you _breathed air_. It had insidious routes it took to do this; you could insulate your damned house to keep it from getting through the cracks. That helped guard against the sly, sneaking bits. But then it just banged its fist on your door, shaking your house to its very foundations, and even though the door and walls muffled it, you could hear what it was shouting at you anyway. That was usually the night time version of it, though.

Typically speaking, you couldn't even tell it had control of you and your actions and reactions until it was gone, or until it'd managed to build up whatever terrible, self-destructive story into its final act.

That's where Bobbi was at when the bastard in the beekeeper suit shoved her into the cell. Or, rather, what had gotten her there in the first place.

But maybe we should head back a little bit further, and talk about how we got here.

Bobbi was one of those lucky kids whose family was _normal_ , by hero standards. Her father worked in IT; he was a cybersecurity consultant for a couple of small businesses through the firm he worked for, and her mother worked for the N.O.W. chapter in San Diego. She and her little brother went to pretty good schools, and were encouraged to pursue whatever interests they had, even if Bobbi's tended to run into the realm of the _absurd_ in her childhood pursuit of superpowers.

Anyway, the point is, her childhood was normal, happy. Average. Felt pretty smooth; her parents fought sometimes but they never split up. She and her brother got along for the most part, other than the typical sibling resentments and rivalries. Everything kind of fell into place for her overall, including her scholarship to Georgia Tech for Biochem after she graduated high school early.

She wasn't sure when adulthood kicked in, exactly. Where it switched from rolling along a paved road to taking hits left and right.

Well, that wasn't particularly _true_ , she could trace it to SHIELD and the minute they decided she was interesting and began vetting her without her knowledge during her undergrad work. Maybe they'd started earlier than that; if so, that was part of the redacted shit in her files. Regardless, she could trace it to that. It'd _seemed_ good still: the accelerated schedule, the perks, signing on to be _wow, so cool, a freakin' secret agent_.

Training had seemed rough because it was; missions had seemed easy because they _were_ , and training was rough. She hadn't realized she was on an accelerated schedule inside SHIELD, either, until _Huntress._

_This isn't SHIELD work, not officially, but a senator has stumbled upon a HYDRA cell within our South American branch, and we don't know how deep it goes--_

_The scent of blood in the air, so thick she could taste it on her tongue. Inert figures on dissecting tables, scientists in full biohazard gear, turning to face her with hands up, cased in bloody rubber gloves. The way those things on the table hadn't been human anymore, the way she'd lost it. The sound of breaking ribs, the bloody mess she'd made of them, the way the last man had laughed, teeth grotesquely bloody as he bit down on the cyanide capsule she hadn't thought to look for. The surprise when she'd come back and slammed the files on her superior's desk, the ones linking that place to Heinrich Zemo--_

Then she'd resisted debriefing, quietly finished her doctorate, and gone freelance as Mockingbird.

_And met Clint Barton when she was 22 and stupid._

They'd eloped not long after she'd yanked him out of trouble; Clint was overall a mess, and damned if she wasn't too, still.

But the hits kept coming.

One minute you're on your honeymoon, the next minute you've been attacked and your husband has lost so much of his hearing that he's considered legally deaf.

Then the _next_ minute, you're forming a West Coast branch of the Avengers with him, because why the hell not? You haven't recovered from Huntress, from the trauma of your honeymoon, why the _fuck_ not?

Seems okay for a bit. Enough that she could pretend it was, that she was the one in charge of everything, and not this _thing_ that kept her up at night, made her sleep with a gun under her pillow and one on her nightstand, and a knife under her mattress.

Then Slade happened, and-- it was too much.

Especially when Clint sided with the man who'd held her captive, brainwashed her, ~~forced~~ ~~ _her to unfaithful_~~. A separation was inevitable.

She went back to SHIELD for some unfathomable reason. No, not entirely unfathomable; she wanted to go back to something she hadn't done with Clint, something that used her schooling and her training and _helped_ people.

They took her back and she was back to cleaning HYDRA house in no time with barely any trouble at all, until The Internship.

She thought it would be easy. Pretend to be a grad student (she was still the right age for it) who was interning on a special project. GLADIATOR, they called it. The attempt to recreate the super serum formula. She was supposed to help with it, while keeping an eye out for whatever other _interested parties_ might try to sabotage it or infiltrate.

Turned out, the head scientist was an AIM mole; the ensuing fallout ended with Bobbi with a bullet in her spine, the lab destroyed, and everything other than a prototype up in flames.

_"She's paid for that serum with her blood and our kid, Fury! Are you going to make her pay for it with her life, too?!"_

It's funny, the things you hear when you're in a coma and fighting to survive.

_Your cells have stopped aging, Bobbi, along with your... other enhancements. It's a miracle._

_Then why the fuck didn't it save my pregnancy?_

Divorce was cruelly inevitable after that.

So was her deep dive into SHIELD clean-up duty. Agents used to joke over coffee in the cantina about the [REDACTED] agent who was wiping out internal HYDRA cells. "HR will take care of it," like they were just being fired or something, and not coldly wiped out in ways that made HYDRA lower levels create urban legends and higher ups grind their teeth.

In all honesty, she was chasing death, flirting with it in a reckless, thuggish kind of way, and had been since her run-in with Slade. Death seemed to like that, anyhow, because it kept brushing her and then letting go. Liked the chase.

Sometimes, usually at night when she was alone, or shoving Hunter away because he couldn't keep his damned hands to himself _("No cuddling, Hunter, you know the rules")_ , she tried to figure out when it would catch up with her. When their paths would collide instead of running parallel.

Except it was less of an open knowledge that she didn't want to be there anymore, but more of an acknowledgement that people in her profession, even people with super serum pumping through their veins, didn't really have much in the way of expecting to reach old age.

 _I'd probably be okay with it_ , she'd think in the middle of a mission, _if this was the one it ended on._

_Or this one._

_This one?_

_This one._

She didn't make it easy for them to push her into the cell; it took about seven of them straining and grunting to get her in, and during the process she bit several bloody. Last minute, she relaxed so they stumbled, and she was able to whirl and kick the metal door closed at lightning speed, catching a man's hand between it and the equally-metal frame.

His howl of pain became a shrill, awful scream when she used one foot to slam above-average weight into the door, completely pulverizing his bones, and laughed when the AIM agents had to hastily open the door to yank the man's hand out and then slammed it shut again with an audible click.

Bobbi was still laughing darkly to herself when she retreated to the back, to the darkest recess of her prison, plotting to make it as difficult as possible for them to kill her. She had no doubt they would; once they got a sample of her blood, that was the end. She'd make sure of it, because she refused to spend her days drugged out of her damned mind in some hidden AIM lab as they routinely drained her of her blood to dose their agents with some off-brand serum.

She stopped when her hearing, keener than most, heard a shift in the corner of the cell she had been about to make her own.

_She wasn't alone in here._

A clearing of a throat, and then a man with dark blonde hair, circles under his eyes, and a haggard appearance ( _stubble, underfed, shaggy hair, been here a month? who is he_ ) shuffled into the light provided by one dim bulb closest to the dingy toilet. He had his hands up in a placating gesture and a sheepish smile on his face, but something burned underneath and twisted the expression for her.

_I only see it because I'm burning, too._

"Easy, neighbor," he spoke in a nondescript American accent, "I'm not looking to get my hand replaced, Skywalker style. Just welcoming you to the neighborhood. Would you like the grand tour?"


	3. the explanation continues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we focus more on zemo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so a few notes. firstly, as i think i said before, i've edited things a little bit from the comics/mcu so there are things that are different, things that are the same, and things that haven't happened that are in the canon works. so don't get too confused if something comes up that you don't remember, yeah? secondly, i totally made a playlist for this instead of making this chapter as lengthy as i meant to. rip. i have to put the songs in order bc i have a PLAN so i'll link it when i do. anyway please enjoy

_She is going to ask me how I came to be in this cell._

_Verdammt._

How _had_ he found himself in one of AIM's nastiest (hygiene-wise, at the least) cells?

He wasn't certain.

His head hurt. No. It felt as though it had been split in two to such a degree that he had to fight himself. she would surely give him a strange look if her were to randomly reach up and check the status of his skull.

He had no desire to poke around in his own mind at the best of times, and this was one of the worst; he certainly did not want a stranger to do so, and doing so would begin by breaking down the things he did into meaningful little packets of information.

_How did I get here?_

There were things missing. Was it temporary amnesia, brought on by a head wound, or was it something else? He had been brooding on that, as well as _no, don't look there, don't touch it_ ~~the question of whether or not something had been done to him, medically, in a lab, under the bright lights, a lifted scalpel, faces rendered inhuman by masks and visors~~.

Regardless, he was unsettled, standing near a precarious edge, at his most feral. It was, perhaps, the worst time to have a new factor thrown into the mix when he hadn't figured out the parameters of the others he had been given, and now he had to work with that as well.

_At least_ , he thought to himself as he watched her spit blood on the floor from the unfortunate underlings she had bitten, _she appears to hate being caged as much as I do._

He chose to adopt a persona he could hide under while allowing him to be _himself_ as much as possible; he was not in a state to develop a complex cover story, so lacing it with as much truth as possible was the best route in this situation. Helmut Zemo without the Zemo bit, essentially.

_But who_ was _himself , anyhow?_

He focused instead on the blonde woman in front of him, whose expression was inscrutable, whose eyes were shuttered against him. The only trace of personality, as she examined him, was the smatter of blood on her chin from her brutal entrance into his world. He ~~loved~~ hated puzzles.

She seemed to be radiating heat like a furnace, however. He could feel it despite the distance between them, sloughing off her skin.

It was excruciating.

She looked young, hardy. _Burning._ Her neck was slender enough that he could crush it with one gloved hand, thumb pressing into that dimple at the bottom of her throat. He considered striding across the distance and doing it; she felt like trouble, if the heat was any indication, but strangulation was such an intimate kill. He didn't know her well enough to want to commit her eyes and expression to his dreams ~~his nightmares~~ for the next couple of months.

"Not much of a talker, are you?" He asked with a chuckle that seemed genuine enough.

She didn't respond, only crossed her arms over her chest, though the corners of her lips showed the ghost of a smirk, just waiting for something to pull it out of her, and so he sat down on the edge of what was currently his bed, crossing his legs at his ankles, and leaned back.

"Well, I can guess your profession in that case, so perhaps we should make an agreement to, ah, use first names only. I'm Richard," he spoke in a soothing, good-natured tone. It was easy to fake. His acting wasn't sloppy; his father had _seen to that_. "But most people call me Dick."

That pulled the waiting smirk to the surface, and something rang inside him. _Triumph, most likely. This was revealing._

"Bobbi," she replied, and she sat down next to him without asking his permission, like she had the _right_ to, and he tried not to grind his teeth, but his head gave such a _surge_ of pain that he had to close his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, she was staring at him with thinly veiled amusement, one eyebrow raised, head tilted just slightly to the side.

Her eyes were still shuttered.

This close to him, the heat increased, and so did the pain in his head, which seemed to focus on a spot above his right ear, where it throbbed relentlessly.

"Is that your real name, or just a moniker?" He asked faintly, or it seemed to him that he had. _Weak. What would Father say if he could see you right now? This headache is a mere trifle; there are other, more important things to take care of before I can allow myself to succumb to it._

However, something about his response seemed to have unlocked the shutters she'd pulled across her eyes, and when he met them again, he was hit with blue eyes that shone with cautious concern, and his internal organs seemed to rearrange themselves in an incredibly uncomfortable manner, while his head _blasted_ him with pain.

_What the fuck is going on?_

"If you know what my profession is, you know better than to ask me that question," her response was wry and her hand came up as she spoke. He cringed away from it instinctively, once it was in his personal space, and she hesitated visibly, then proceeded again.

"Stay still, you don't look so well."

He had to remind himself he was posing as a regular person, and held himself still as best he could muster, but a flash of ~~hands around his throat; a hidden knife~~ blared through his head.

Helmut's hand shot off the edge of the bed and wrapped around her wrist, and then−

_Nothing. Darkness. Cold._

_Bliss._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uwu uwu uwu what happened to zemo? and no, it was not love at first sight, so the ppl who guessed that are WRONG. anyway i'll leave you guys alone for probably another month, idk, i have no schedule.


End file.
